Senior Laser Test & Characterization Engineer

Originally posted 3 November 2026 by the employer.

About the role

Neurophos is hiring an electro-optics engineer to build and run the test and characterization of the lasers and optical amplifiers behind photonic AI processors. You will own the bench measuring narrow-linewidth seed lasers and high-speed pulsed sources, including relative intensity noise, phase noise, timing jitter, linewidth, pulse shape, and RF drive generation.

What you'll do

• Design, build, and maintain the laser and amplifier characterization bench, including polarization-maintaining fiber setups at watt-level optical power.
• Measure RIN from ~kHz to tens of GHz at the source and through amplifier chains, including shot-noise subtraction and integration over receiver bandwidth.
• Measure laser linewidth and frequency noise using delayed self-heterodyne or equivalent methods, wavelength stability, side-mode suppression, and polarization extinction ratio.
• Characterize high-speed pulsed sources at tens of GHz, assessing pulse width, pulse shape, pulse-to-pulse amplitude uniformity, and timing jitter.
• Measure RF phase noise of synthesizers and clock chains, determine residual phase noise across the full electro-optic chain, and convert phase noise to integrated jitter.
• Automate test setups and build instrument control and data pipelines using Python to ensure repeatable and traceable results.

What you'll need

• MS or PhD in electrical engineering, physics, optics, or photonics.
• 3+ years of industry or graduate research hands-on lab experience with narrow-linewidth lasers (DFB, external-cavity, or fiber lasers) at 1550 nm.
• Direct experience measuring RIN and laser phase or frequency noise, including limits such as shot noise, thermal noise, and instrument floors.
• Experience characterizing high-speed pulsed or modulated optical signals using fast photodetectors, sampling oscilloscopes, autocorrelation, and optical spectrum analysis.
• RF and microwave experience to tens of GHz using phase noise analyzers, signal source analyzers, spectrum analyzers, synthesizers, RF amplifiers, and coaxial interconnects.
• Hands-on experience with polarization-maintaining fiber (fusion splicing, connector care, PER measurement) and fiber amplifiers (EDFA).
• Proficiency with Python or similar languages for instrument control and data analysis.

Nice to have

• Femtosecond-level timing-jitter metrology, including photodetected pulse trains, residual phase noise, and cross-correlation analyzers.
• Experience with mode-locked lasers or electro-optic pulse carving using Mach-Zehnder or thin-film lithium niobate modulators, bias control, and RZ formats.
• Experience with balanced detection and common-mode rejection measurements.
• Knowledge of stimulated Brillouin scattering, interferometric noise from reflections, and mitigation strategies.
• Experience with high-power fiber amplifiers, including multicore or cladding-pumped designs.
• Background in optical communications or microwave photonics, or experience bringing up a new lab and managing equipment procurement.

Skills: narrow-linewidth lasers, silicon photonics, RIN, phase noise, optical amplifiers

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